In The Night Watchman Express, Miriam and Simon were kidnapped and thrown on the strange train... Now in Book Two of The Crown Phoenix series, they arrive at the terrifying destination known as Devil's Kitchen.

There they will face human experiments in a laboratory known as The Infirmary.

There Miriam will be forced to work in an underground factory.

There Simon is held in a luxurious prison by jailers who are as beautiful as they are deadly...

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Reviews

Review by:
Alysa H
on April 13, 2015 :
This Neo-Victorian tale is structurally superior to Book 1, which kind of felt like two entirely different books stuck together, but it was still ultimately a little disappointing. I liked the "creepy underground factory" and Simon being held captive and brainwashed (with weird S&M undertones...), but there were a few issues carried over from earlier (e.g., the young characters' ages being ambiguous, making it difficult to gauge their emotional verisimilitude) and the last few chapters are rather abrupt and underdeveloped, as if author DeLuca just got tired of writing or something.

This is arguably more of a "problem with advertizing" than a problem with the book in itself, but I still fail to see anything steampunk or even particularly fantastical here, beyond one simple plot point of travel between England and the (fictional) tropical island of Lampala being made quick and easy by a strange metal device. That's actually a really great premise for post-colonial speculative fiction, so congrats to DeLuca for that! I wish that these books had done more with that premise.
(reviewed long after purchase)